Video Review by Marilyn Robitaille

Last Updated 08/01/02

Email: robitai@our-town.com

“Mulholland Drive”

            “Mulholland Drive” is a darkly dramatic, psychological suspense that fails to follow traditional narrative form. David Lynch wrote and directed this intriguing film, receiving “Best Director” at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, as well as an Academy Award nomination for the same. His previous films include "The Straight Story," "Lost Highway," "Blue Velvet," and "Twin Peaks."  With “Mulholland Drive,” he takes the mystery film noir in directions that reinvent the way the tale is told.

Illusion and the appearance of reality blend to create alternative possibilities played out in several characters’ minds. A drama full of masks and masks removed plays from the middle forward and backward until you’re left with a montage of scenes that almost begins to make sense, but not quite. They refuse normal logic, so you have to do the work. It’s not always pretty, and resolution doesn’t come neatly wrapped if you do find an interpretation that satisfies.  I’ve watched the movie (or at least parts of it) three times now, so don’t expect to breeze through it if you plan on giving it its due. 

Pay close attention from the opening jitterbug scene forward. Notice details and seemingly insignificant characters. You’ll see them again later in a completely different context, but it’s important to establish connections early on.  A wide array of bizarre characters contribute details, creating vectors that lead to and support the predominant plot. A short man in a cowboy hat has a message that a director can’t refuse. The director has an unfaithful wife who sleeps with the pool boy. Pink paint, red sheets, a man and his nightmare, a diner, a blue box, a waitress named Betty, a murder, a suicide, a dinner party, a piano-shaped ashtray: all these things are left to be filtered, interpreted, and ultimately connected.

            The opening scene of the film involves a woman (Laura Harring) who suffers from amnesia as the result of a car cash. After being befriended by a naïve ingénue (Naomi Watts), “Rita” (who’s taken her name from a Rita Hayworth poster) attempts to link the few clues available to discover her identity.

 This is not what “Mulholland Drive” is about, however. It’s about lesbian love disappointed, revenge, and retribution. If I say much more, I’ll deprive you the movie’s challenge. As is the case with most David Lynch movies, the fun is in the guess work. Just don’t expect the process to be easy; Lynch movies demand an acquired taste. Remember that a drive down Mulholland Drive takes to Hollywood, the place that deals in dreams.  

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